My money comes from my day job. I write during my lunch break, and get about one hand-written page if I'm lucky and flowing. That's some progress. Gone are the days when I could bang out 2000 words by noon, when I was between semesters and had no job. A quick calculation tells me my current novel will be first-drafted in ten years at the current rate. So keep your eyes peeled and hold your breath, cuz that's just around the corner!
The most successful people I know in Hollywood are the ones that were able to work for free for 1, 2, 5 years in order to be in the right place. Then they worked for peanuts for 2,5,10 years in order to climb up the ladder. It was okay, though, because they never had to pay for anything. Their earnings became like an allowance. People in their '30s.
So, when I read this headline, I had a bit of a deja-vu/repost ping go off. I read a similar article somewhere about how a woman was struggling because her fellow female entrepreneurs didn't understand that she just couldn't borrow money from her husband to keep her company afloat. I'm gonna try and hunt it down and link it in the comments here. It might make for some interesting comparisons.
Wasn't there something about those shops in the mall that don't seem to have any customers? They were run by "trophy wives" on the spouse's money to give them something to do. I'm looking online for the article describing these things and for the life of me cannot find it. The point of the article was the women who scrimped and saved and begged for SBA loans were pissed that these shops were undercutting them.
I can't find it, but from what I remember, the two articles are very similar. Some people just don't acknowledge that their success somewhat hinges on outside factors. That said, I found out while dredging through Google that apparently if you're married and one of you two own a business, finances and taxes and laws get real messy, especially in divorce. Who knew?
Amanda Palmer goes into great detail around this issue in her book, "The Art of Asking". Her basic premise is that asking for support, for payment, for patronage, is not the wrong way to go about getting support. It is one, perfectly valid, way to do it. Whether it's a husband/wife supporting the other spouse with a high-paying job, fans supporting via Patreon, a grant from an artistic institution, a pension check, savings, credit cards, or other ways to pay living expenses, everyone is supported by something/someone. She points out that we all have this romantic notion of "Walden" (often called "the manual for self reliance") being written by this solitary writer, who went out into a cabin in the woods and played hermit for a year. A very romantic notion, sure. But wrong. Every weekend Thoreau was visited by family. Who brought him food and fresh-baked donuts. So this whole "lonely ascetic writer in the woods" thing? Yeah. Didn't happen. Amanda Palmer has turned this into a rallying cry for artists: TAKE THE DONUTS! We all - artists, writers, etc - need to learn to take the donuts when they are offered to us... and even to recognize it when someone is doing so! Being supported, being sponsored... hell, just paying the bills... does not diminish our art. And we need to learn to accept that.
That sounds very interesting, I'll take a look at the book. I actually posted something related to your point about authors asking for payment only a day or two ago. Feel free to take a look at it if you've got the time. Other than that, I agree with your point. However, the article, in my opinion at least, is less about asking for payment and/or sponsorship, and more so about having no opportunity to rely on some support in the first place, be it from wealthy family members or a job that conveniently allows you to write all day while paying your bills. Writers and artists should take the donuts when they are offered, but unfortunately they rarely are. It doesn't in any way diminish the art itself, but if one were to go into the field expecting donuts to be offered to them outright, I'm afraid they'd be in for a rough awakening.
Actually, this is my point (and Amanda Palmer's): Artists are really bad at understanding when they are being offered donuts. They are also really bad at accepting the donuts. I have spent the last 20 years working with artists and arts organizations, and it is astounding how blind artists are to the opportunities that are being thrown at them every single day. And how reticent they are to accept the proffered donut. Accepting the donuts requires the artist to understand they are being offered a donut, it isn't poisoned, they do deserve it, and accepting the donut does not compromise their art in any way. That's a big part of "The Art of Asking".... teaching artists that it is ok to ask, and to receive. Writers and artists should take the donuts when they are offered, but unfortunately they rarely are ...
I don't see how this is a problem, except that some talented writers are held back by their personal circumstances.
It's a fairly niche issue, but I think the problem she sees is that by avoid discussing the role that financial support can play, new writers might be operating under unrealistic expectations. Given her own circumstances that she describes, she might not have realized how large a role money played in her ability to be a successful writer until she had enough.
I see now, thank you! Thanks to 45usp as well :)
I believe the author's primary complaint is that it's disingenuous of the exemplified 'success story' authors to pin their successes on 'hard work,' 'remaining childless,' or any other such glib reasoning. In fact their successes are often supported in finance and by community; to claim otherwise provides a false model of success to other would-be [inexperienced] authors who could then make some non-productive and possibly very bad life choices based on that advice. It takes talent to be a successful author, absolutely, but some people have their wheels greased and roads paved while the rest of us creak and bump through.
Because success as a professional hinges on remuneration and the act of selling something, and people who are known as authors "supporting" themselves on their writing are held in radically higher esteem than those who write "on the side" but make the majority of their income doing something else. More than that, The Great Creative Meatgrinder tells talented, impressionable young creatives that if they build it they will come, that talent will win out over mediocrity, that it took you 20 years to become an overnight success, that it's all about strength and perseverance. The Great Creative Meatgrinder does not tell these children that they'll be doing it while asking if you want fries with that while the stories they'll hear will all be about trust fund kids who get a new Macbook every year because uncle Chester loves "having a writer in the family" and drive a two-year-old BMW 7-series because Ivanka hates it when the Fullertons have a newer car than she does. And they'll get to go to meetings at places with $500 bottle service that will sell you five bacon-wrapped dates for $12 because - and here's the other thing they won't tell you - the rich children pick expensive places purely to keep the proles out. Everybody loves Anne Lamott. Bird by bird. Page by page. It's about the work, which you can do while being divorced, while raising a kid. Few people mention the fact that Anne Lamott started hounding her dad's agent when she was in her teens, and didn't get anything published until said agent eventually got something sold when she was in her early 30s. Know how many aspiring young writers get an agent that will read their drivel for fifteen fucking years? If you guessed "the ones whose parents have made their agents a lot of money" you didn't need to read this article.